I’m sitting here with two books of poetry open - ‘failure’ by Philip Schultz and ‘Walking to Martha’s Vineyard’ by Franz Wright. Two white boys alright.
Just finished ‘A War with Grandpa’, a young (very young) adult novel by Robert Kimmel Smith. Why he needs 3 names I don’t know. Maybe because there are so many Robert Smiths? Anyways, this is for my 1st grade mentoring.
On the Kindle app on my phone I’ve got ‘The Books of Jacob’ Olga Tokarczuk, 1,000 pages of it if it had pages, it just has unfolding screens, endlessly unfolding screens. I’m on page 525 if it was a page. Jewish shtetl life in Eastern Europe, 18th century. It won the Nobel Prize.
‘The Angels Knocking on the Tavern Door’ Hafez, translated by Robert Bly and Leonard Lewisohn (in smaller print) lies nearby. I sometimes slip that into my shoulder bag when I’m off to the cafe. They spent 6 years (Robert and Leonard) looking for metaphors and similes that might provide some approximation of what they thought Hafez might have been trying to say 600 years ago.
What if the evening news shows were a review of books and talking about them? Just a bit of news, like a commercial breaking in once in a while. What would that be like? A lively, informed, intelligent panel going after it, going off on it. Curious and uninhibited, courageous, discovering new meanings and new pathways to find new meanings. We could call it ‘news 2’. Everyone sitting around drinking cappuccinos, maybe a barista and a cafe in the background.
The first poem in ‘Walking to Martha’s Vineyard’ is called 'Year One’ and it’s illustrated, presumably, by ‘Monica Westin 2006’ whose name is written and dated on the inside cover of the book. There could be illustration, dance, oratory, so many ways to celebrate literature. It would be a great show. Wheel of Fortune comes on next. Then America’s Funniest Home Videos and then . . . something else. But for awhile it was just books and talking about it.
Here’s the poem:
Year One
I was still standing
on a northern corner.
Moonlit winter clouds the color of the desperation of wolves.
Proof
of Your existence? There is nothing
but.
I’ve got more books in my bookshelf. I’ve got more bookshelves.
I buy books if I can’t find them anywhere else. ‘Talking To The Moon, Wildlife adventures on the plains and prairies of Osage country’ from the University of Oklahoma Press was $31.84 with shipping. It’ll be here in a couple of weeks. John Joseph Mathews.
Hafez says:
Don’t expect obedience, promise keeping, or rectitude
From me; I’m drunk. I’ve been famous for carrying
A wine pitcher around since the First Covenant with Adam.
He, of course, is referring to a different kind of wine.
In my favorite book, ‘failure’, published in 2007, there’s a poem called ‘The Summer People’.
Santos, a strong, friendly man,
who built my wife’s sculpture studio,
Fixed everything I couldn’t,
looked angry in town last week.
Then he stopped coming. We wondered
if we paid him enough, if he envied us.
Once he came over late to help me catch a bat
with a newspaper and trash basket.
He liked that I laughed at how scared I got.
We’re “year rounds,” what the locals call
summer people who live here full time.
Always in a hurry, the summer people honk a lot,
own bigger cars and houses. Once I beat a guy
in a pickup to a parking space, our summer sport.
”Lousy New Yorker!” he cried.
Every day now men from Guatemala, Ecuador,
and Mexico line up at the railroad station.
They know that they’re despised,
that no one likes having to share their rewards,
or being made to feel spiteful.
When my uncle Joe showed me the shotgun
he kept near the cash register
to scare the black migrants
who bought his overpriced beer and cold cuts
in his grocery outside of Rochester, N.Y.,
his eyes blazed like emerald suns.
It’s impossible to forget his eyes.
At parties the summer people
who moved here after 9/11
talk about all the things they had to give up.
It’s beautiful here, they say, but everything
is tentative and strange,
as if the beauty isn’t theirs to enjoy.
When I’m tired, my father’s accent
scrapes my tongue like a scythe.
He never cut our grass or knew
what grade I was in. He worked days,
nights, and weekends, but failed anyway.
Late at night, when he was too tired to sleep,
he’d stare out the window so powerfully
the world inside and outside
our house would disappear.
In Guatemala, after working all day,
Santos studied to be an architect.
He suffered big dreams, his wife said.
My wife’s studio is magnificent.
We’d hear him up there in the dark,
hammering and singing, as if
he were the happiest man alive.
And from ‘The Books of Jacob‘ of a thousand pages if there’s one:
It was as if my master Mordechai already knew about everything. A few days later he appeared out of the blue in Busk because he had had a strange dream. He had dreamed that in front of the synagogue in Lwow he saw the Jacob of the Bible handing out goat droppings to passersby. Most of those who received these gifts were offended or burst into raucous laughter, but those who accepted the gift and swallowed it respectfully began to shine from within like lanterns. Thus in this vision, Mordechai, too, held out his hand to receive the gift.
‘The War with Grand Pa’, page 93 under the chapter heading ‘GO FISH’ has a pretty good paragraph:
I was thinking pretty hard about how I was going to get back at Grandpa. It wasn’t easy. There were a lot of things I could do and a lot I’d never do. Like burning his underwear, for instance. I didn’t want to do something I’d be sorry for later.
The show could go on like that for half an hour or more, exciting, diverse, spontaneous connections, hilarity. It would be great. Interviews, sponsorships. Mercedes Benz and Toyota competing for commercial space. Burger King and Corona beer commercials like on football games. The Arther C. and Mildred G. Saranopticas Foundation for the Support of the Arts.
I only want to watch, I wouldn’t be on the actual show.
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